The Oologists' Record, March i, 1922. 



mark and consists of a hollow in the sand or shingle. This 

 is sometimes lined with small pebbles and, if placed amongst 

 dried sea grass or rubbish, with small chopped material. The 

 eggs are very difficult to discover as the bird usually leaves the 

 nest long before one has spotted it, its pale colour harmonising 

 so well with the sea sand that detection, as it slips off the nest, 

 is no easy matter. The clutch of eggs is invariably two, and in 

 shape they are pointed ovals, true pyriform eggs being rare. 

 The ground colour is pale creamy-buff, and this is marked with 

 delicate spots and scribblings of dark brown and lavender-grey. 

 The markings are very evenly dispersed over the whole shell and 

 in no eggs are the markings dense. The eggs on the whole are 

 very like delicately marked eggs of Aegialitis nivosa, Cass. The 

 average measurements of a small series is 1-28 inches X '93 inches. 

 The breeding season commences early in September and continues 

 to about the middle of December. 



C. tricollaris— Three-handed Plover. — In the last four years it 

 has been my good fortune to have had exceptional opportunities 

 of studying the breeding habits of this plover. During that period 

 I have examined about 200 nests and 98 per cent, of those have 

 been on shingle beds. Very rarely indeed was a nest found away 

 from shingle. The principal breeding grounds are the beds and 

 banks of rivers such as the Tarka and Fish Rivers, which may be 

 taken as typical examples of South African rivers. They are 

 really nothing but huge sluits with banks 10 to 20 feet high. 

 In the beds are numerous water holes and shallow pools which 

 never dry up, being fed by small fountains. Along the banks and 

 in the beds one finds innumerable patches of shingle, and it is to 

 these patches that C. tricollaris resorts for breeding. A stony 

 patch near a dam will generally yield a nest or two, but I am quite 

 convinced that the majority of birds resort to the rivers for breeding. 

 A long series of records of nests found along the two rivers men- 

 tioned above show that 75 per cent, were found in the river bed. 

 It has always been a puzzle to me why the birds should so persistently 

 stick to the river bed, as a great number of nests get destroyed 

 annually when these rivers come down in flood. Each pair of 

 birds takes command of its own shingle bank, driving all others 

 away, so that it is a very rare occurrence to find two nests on the 

 same bank. I have frequently observed that only certain shingle 

 patches will contain nests and that year after year the nests will 



